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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (10037)	5/11/2005 4:53:03 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

James West And Bill Clinton Oh, That Liberal Media Spokane Mayor James West may have been offering public jobs in exchange for sex. <<< Federal agents are looking into accusations that Spokane's mayor offered municipal jobs to men he met in gay online chat rooms in exchange for sex -- the latest allegations against the Republican official. Mayor James West, who took a leave of absence on Tuesday, has been under fire since The Spokesman-Review reported allegations that he abused two boys while he was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader in the late 1970s and early 1980s. City officials also have launched an independent investigation into whether West offered internships in exchange for sex, and whether his office computer was used improperly. >>> The Seattle PI thinks this is very bad. <<< Whatever problems the former Republican Senate majority leader faces right now, being a gay man is likely the least among them. His sexuality is not the issue. His hypocrisy is. West is in trouble not because he is a gay man, but because he is a man who was apparently willing to use the power of his public office to solicit sexual favors. >>> Though trading public jobs for sexual favors is illegal (and West is a Republican, which does not help him with the PI), the newspaper is not sure whether he should stay in office. Why not? I can't claim to read the minds of the PI's editorial board, but I'll bet that the reason for their timidity is former president Bill Clinton. If they say that West should resign if these accusations are true, then many will wonder why they took the opposite position when Democrat Bill Clinton got into the same fix. My own view is simpler: Public officials who trade public jobs for bribes, of whatever kind, should resign — but then I never supported Bill Clinton, so I don't have to keep protecting that terribly flawed man. Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics. (Forgotten some of the Clinton examples? The best known are Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky. Flowers received an Arkansas job after threatening to go public. She displaced a single black woman with better credentials who then filed a formal complaint. Imagine, just for a moment, what the press would have done to a Republican who did the same thing as Clinton. Monica Lewinsky was the only person in her class of interns to receive a job from the Clinton administration. If you believe that she received the job because she was the best qualified in that group, you will believe anything.) Posted by Jim Miller thatliberalmedia.com nytimes.com seattlepi.nwsource.com seanet.com